Public "read-only" topics - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Private discussion areas.
#14312341
Just a suggestion:

Private member forums don't generate publicly available content or advertise the forum (since they're private).

It would also be hard to advertise private member clubs if no one can see them - someone might be interested in joining but if they cannot see the content there's not much to advertise the club other than the name.

Also, even if a topic is restricted to members of the club, it might have broader interest and be informative to people outside the club (it could trigger normal Pofo discussion if seen outside).

There may be a chilling effect on posting to private member clubs if the content isn't even visible outside the club. (which may not be very lively)

So, maybe these clubs (well...only one so far, but going forward...) would benefit if at least some threads would be "read-only" to anyone, and writeable to members? That would generate advertisable forum/club content while keeping the content within the bounds of the club.
#14312367
Of course, I don't think you'd have to mandate publicly readable threads. Some may like total privacy which is fine, and I figure many would want private threads.

But I figure most would want a lot of their content publicly readable.

I dunno, maybe the commies in SR-RF can comment. I'm trying to promote their club apparently
#14312632
SR-RF

If your intention is to promote our "club" at least get the name right.


#14312720
I like the idea, in the sense it could be an opportunity fort clubs to publish ideological statements (positions), essay type pieces of writing and responses to other clubs ideological positions, I for one would hope that the members of SN-RF would be interested in work like that.
#14315099
So long as it would be individual threads.

I like the private ideological forum, in part, because I can lay everything out there and—I hope—make a united front to the public. I certainly wouldn't feel as comfortable going to town on a topic inside the club if I knew that some other member of another ideology was going to come out and use that against me later in another thread.

I have seen that even in the thread to start our group—certain people came in and immediately started trying to use what we had been saying against us.
#14315135
I was thinking it would be just different forums of the club you can post in - so there'd be one forum for private threads, one forum for publicly readable threads. In my head, you'd still have "SN-RF", where anybody could read the threads there but only members could post, but there'd be a "Private" subforum inside "SN-RF" where only members could read/write. But there are other ways to do it probably.

What I would like is just this: club members could freely choose whether the threads they make go in the public section or the private section. To me, that would be enough.

But if your club wanted more control over what goes in the public content, I guess the group leader could have exclusive privileges on posting or moving threads to the public forum. I don't know how complicated that kind of privileging would be to implement.
#14315229
You could edit the thread to remove any info people wish to remain private.

I don't think it is necessary to make entire threads public. If the intention is to advertise the group's existence then edited highlights would suffice. It's also possible to cross post content to the public forums if members wish to take the initiative to share.
#14315241
I don't know how this would work for all clubs, if there's a lot of drama in some club or such you might not like the ability for whole threads to be public.

But I think at least for Centre Ground it would be fine to allow whole threads to be started publicly with comments limited to club members. If the group leader wants to edit the thread or make it private, that's fine.
#14315278
There is a sub-forum titled 'Publishing' towards the bottom of the main page. If posters are interested they could post content there perhaps?

I'm just making suggestions. I don't think private groups should be expected to entertain the rest of us.
#14315331
I support this feature and, personally, I don't really have major privacy concerns but I'm happy to accommodate those that do.

Good idea, Lexington.

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